LAS VEGAS – The unprovoked knife attacks on the Las Vegas Strip on Thursday began with four performers dressed as showgirls.
It was just before 11:40 a.m. local time when they were approached by a man claiming to be a chef outside the Wynn Casino, where performers were taking photos with tourists.
The man also wanted a photo with them. But when he pulled out a 12-inch kitchen knife, the performers began to back away.
In a few minutes, eight people would be injured, two of them fatally.
The injuries inflicted in that brief window ranged from stab wounds to the chest and back to stab wounds to the liver and diaphragm. The victims were both locals and tourists, according to authorities.
These new details were presented in a three-page police arrest report that roughly describes how the mass stabbing in the northern end of the Strip unfolded nearly five years after the October 2017 mass shooting in the ‘opposite end of the famous tourism. hallway
Police identified the suspect in Thursday’s stabbing as Yoni Barrios, 32, who faces two counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder.
On Friday afternoon, a judge ordered Barrios held without bail at a downtown Las Vegas jail until his arraignment on the charges next week, at which time another judge could reconsider whether to grant the suspect bail.
Victim remembered as ‘devoted woman’
Among the first stabbing victims, according to the report, was performer Maris DiGiovanni, who went by the name Maris Jordan. He did not survive his injuries.
The trauma surgeon Dr. Kevin Kuruvilla pronounced her dead shortly after arriving at University Medical Center. She was 30 years old.
“Maris loved the beauty of life and lived it to the fullest without limitations,” her brother, Gage DiGiovanni, told the USA TODAY Network on Friday. “She was a true and caring friend, a devoted wife, a doting sister and a loving daughter.”
MONTH:Las Vegas stabbing victim Maris Jordan left ‘waves of love’ around the world, family says
DiGiovanni said her sister was not a dancer, but worked on the Strip, where she gave directions to tourists and posed for pictures.
After the initial attack on the performers, according to the report, the suspect ran down a sidewalk on the west side of the Wynn, where he encountered 47-year-old Brent Hallet.
Hallet, also a Las Vegas resident, was stabbed in the back. He died on the sidewalk outside the Wynn, according to the Clark County Coroner’s Office.
Minutes after throwing the knife into some nearby bushes, the suspect was arrested by the security guards of the area. Police later recovered the knife.
‘He’s got a knife!’: Survivors describe shock as stabbings unfold
Authorities have not identified the surviving victims. As of Friday morning, one patient remained in critical condition, another was in fair condition and two patients had been released from the hospital, according to a spokesman for University Medical Center, Nevada’s only Level 1 trauma center. .
“I couldn’t believe this was happening to me,” said Victoria Caytano, one of the showgirl impersonators who was released from a hospital Friday after being treated for a stab wound.
“I got up and started running,” Caytano told KLAS-TV. “I started screaming, ‘he’s got a knife!’
Anna Westby, who suffered a puncture wound to the lung, said she and Caytano were with DiGiovanni when Barrios attacked them.
“I’m screaming, asking everybody for help,” he told KLAS-TV. “He grabbed me, stabbed me in the back and then ran off.”
According to authorities, the suspect thought the girls were “laughing” at him
Dressed in blue prison garb and shackled at the wrists, Barrios faced a judge Friday afternoon for the first time since his arrest. His hands were covered in large orange mittens.
Barrios did not speak during the roughly one-minute hearing. A public defender who could comment on his behalf was not listed in court records Friday.
After the hearing, Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson told reporters he would “seriously consider” pursuing the death penalty in the case. He said his office would make a decision within 30 to 60 days.
Barrios’ arrest report indicates he is originally from Guatemala, but, he told detectives in an interview after his arrest, he arrived in Las Vegas from California two days before the stabbings.
He said he planned to move in with a friend in Las Vegas, but when he arrived at his friend’s house, Barrios was told he could no longer stay there.
On the day of the stabbings, Barrios said he left his friend’s house early in the morning and took a bus to the Strip, arriving around 8 a.m.
When he encountered the performers dressed as showgirls outside the Wynn later that morning, he became angry because he “thought the women were laughing at him and making fun of his clothes” and “let his anger out” .
In that same interview with detectives, according to the report, Barrios confirmed that the knife found in the bushes was the weapon used in the attacks.
Contributor: The Associated Press
